Sunday Quote

To live is so startling it leaves little time for anything else. ~ Emily Dickinson

Happy Birthday to my 24 year old...

With another Carnage Cake - the theme this year is the Prehistoric Great White Hammerhead Shark has risen up from the depths of the volcanic rocks in Hawaii and has spotted two unsuspecting scuba divers - who look suspiciously like Chris and Molly...will they escape? Who knows...(however in the theme of carnage cakes, these things don't generally end well...and in this cake, the shark was attacked by dessert forks)...Tucker the dog (who is only allowed at the table by special birthday order) looks doubtful.

Tucker likes the snow...for a little bit.

Goodbye Little Seal

I know you've got this one, too, dear F.E.

Sunday Quote

I've never known a writer who didn't feel ill at ease in the world. Have you? We all feel unhoused in some sense. - Andrea Barrett

Wow, it snowed...

Julie Andrews

Years (and years and years) ago first saw Julie Andrews in Mary Poppins at the Larchmont movie theatre --and tonight met her at the wonderful Voracious Reader bookstore just a few doors down. A full circle, lovely moment.

Sunday Quote

Let us live in the land of the whispering trees, Alder and aspen and poplar and birch, Singing our prayers in a pale, sea-green breeze, With star-flower rosaries and moss banks for church. - Elizabeth Bishop, For C.W.B.

twenty years...

Since Audrey is on my mind from my earlier post, it was a bit of a shock when a thing on TV mentioned she died twenty years ago. It does not seem that long a time. Even more shocking was that she died at only 63. Twenty years ago that age might have seemed older to me than it does now. Still, such a loss, she was a wonder. While looking for photos I stumbled across this blog that has done such a lovely job of assembling AH photos, let me direct you to La Feem.

restless round-up

I think Holly Golightly would appreciate a museum of shopping bags. Especially if they were from Tiffany...wait, do they have shopping bags? And are they a Tiffany blue shade? If you have Holly, you need Frank....the man is working hard here, folks. Adore this song. Would Holly take the subway? Possibly. If so, what would she be caught reading? I think she might just thumb through a Vogue magazine or be modern day with an ipad and poke around design sponge for inspiration. She probably would stay up late...later than this, but I am off to read a bit of Proof of Heaven by Eben Alexander, M.D. which several sources tell me is fascinating and one source says she knows him and he is the least flaky man on the planet and that whatever he would say is the real deal...time to peruse.

Sunday Quote

...A language for the redemption of failsay and tongue-muzzle. Every never-said will come. - Kristen McHenry, The Goatfish Alphabet

The former hall bath

It was one of those fifty pink ones...and unlike the woman in this blog asking people to keep their fifties baths, we tore ours down ... ah well. We had our reasons but I do like her passion and her pink poodles.

You would be proud, Dr. King...

‎"Find the good and praise it" -Alex Haley...quoted at the inauguration as I watch on TV, as plumbers bang up our hall bathroom, as I wait for the poet, Richard Blanco, as I sit on the couch in my day-off clothes, as James Taylor plays, as my America is finally catching up to her vision of a country for everyone, all colors, genders, beliefs, backgrounds, sexual orientations, ...we,re getting there, people, slowly but surely, we are getting there.

Sunday Quote

You know, I do believe in magic. I was born and raised in a magic time, in a magic town, among magicians. Oh, most everybody else didn’t realize we lived in that web of magic, connected by silver filaments of chance and circumstance. But I knew it all along. When I was twelve years old, the world was my magic lantern, and by its green spirit glow I saw the past, the present and into the future. You probably did too; you just don’t recall it. See, this is my opinion: we all start out knowing magic. We are born with whirlwinds, forest fires, and comets inside us. We are born able to sing to birds and read the clouds and see our destiny in grains of sand. But then we get the magic educated right out of our souls. We get it churched out, spanked out, washed out, and combed out. We get put on the straight and narrow and told to be responsible. Told to act our age. Told to grow up, for God’s sake. And you know why we were told that? Because the people doing the telling were afraid of our wildness and youth, and because the magic we knew made them ashamed and sad of what they’d allowed to wither in themselves. After you go so far away from it, though, you can’t really get it back. You can have seconds of it. Just seconds of knowing and remembering. When people get weepy at movies, it’s because in that dark theater the golden pool of magic is touched, just briefly. Then they come out into the hard sun of logic and reason again and it dries up, and they’re left feeling a little heartsad and not knowing why. When a song stirs a memory, when motes of dust turning in a shaft of light takes your attention from the world, when you listen to a train passing on a track at night in the distance and wonder where it might be going, you step beyond who you are and where you are. For the briefest of instants, you have stepped into the magic realm. That’s what I believe. The truth of life is that every year we get farther away from the essence that is born within us. We get shouldered with burdens, some of them good, some of them not so good. Things happen to us. Loved ones die. People get in wrecks and get crippled. People lose their way, for one reason or another. It’s not hard to do, in this world of crazy mazes. Life itself does its best to take that memory of magic away from us. You don’t know it’s happening until one day you feel you’ve lost something but you’re not sure what it is. It’s like smiling at a pretty girl and she calls you “sir.” It just happens. These memories of who I was and where I lived are important to me. They make up a large part of who I’m going to be when my journey winds down. I need the memory of magic if I am ever going to conjure magic again. I need to know and remember, and I want to tell you. ― Robert R. McCammon, Boy's Life tags: childhood, magic

Sunday Quote

No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversations as a dog does. - Christopher Morley (I miss my dear Emmy who was a very good listener).

Sunday Quote

Earth’s crammed with heaven, and every common bush afire with God; but only he who sees, takes off his shoes – the rest sit round it and pluck blackberries. – Elizabeth Barrett Browning

January anew

Have loved these calendars since childhood with the illustrations by the late great Erik Blegvad. I was thrilled to stumble across this one. I think the quote sets a good tone for the New Year, don't you?

Sunday Quote

For last year's words belong to last year's language and next year's words await another voice. And to make an end is to make a beginning. - T.S. Eliot

A Manhattan Merry Merry to All!

why no Sunday Quote? Well, clearly I was lazing about in this store window in Manhattan!

Wait! This is more my speed. Ah, perfect window.

I know this fellow. Last time I saw him he was having some dental issues. Glad to see they have been resolved - and he got a book deal to boot!

Even Atlas feels less weary during NYC holiday cheery!

Fifth Avenue all decked out

And a man proposed to his girlfriend right here and she said yes! We liked the big smooch but my 13 year old was slightly appalled at the PDA!

This sort of display was far more to his liking!

As well as visiting our furry, finny, feathery friends at the Central Park Zoo.

And the best of all was spending the day with my dear friend, Caren, and my youngest - who says there isn't any holiday magic left? Merry Christmas, everyone!

Christmas light-hearted

So we are at the tile store checking out tiles for the hall bath when we realize on the other street is this really decked out house.

What is really cool is a lot of the stuff, really most of it, is old fashioned, like from the fifties, and it makes the whole yard have this fun vibe.

We thought how much fun it would be to bring the kids over to see it - especially at night - so we did!

It was even better than we had anticipated.

It really has been hard to get into the Christmas spirit with the world astir with hard sadnesses and worries, but something fun and whimsical can offer some light hearted pleasure and I appreciate all their effort.